Today was supposed to be forgettable.
Wake up. Go to the hospital. Drink the radioactive aquarium water they call CT contrast. Get scanned. Go home. Repeat the same mental cycle I’ve apparently been living in for months now.
I got to the hospital at 7:30 this morning, checked in, and started working through the required 32 ounces of watered-down contrast like it was some punishment specifically designed by people who hate joy. If you’ve never had a CT scan before, I highly recommend keeping that streak alive. The scan itself isn’t painful exactly, but the dye they inject into you feels like your body suddenly decided to preheat itself from the inside out. Every single time it happens, I briefly become convinced I’m either dying or actively peeing myself. Neither experience is ideal.
Once it was over, there wasn’t much to do besides kill time until dinner, so I found a coffee shop in Montrose called 787 Coffee and camped there for a few hours with a book. The place looked like an old house that had slowly been overtaken by graffiti artists and caffeine addicts, but they made a fantastic tiramisu latte. On a completely unrelated note, it took me six tries to spell tiramisu correctly just now, and I’m still not confident this is the winning version.
I spent most of the afternoon reading The Flamethrowers, which is a book I’ve been “currently reading” for what feels like the last presidential administration. I genuinely like it. I think. It’s mostly character development mixed with the history of an Italian motorcycle company, which sounds incredibly boring when I type it out, but somehow it works. I keep picking it up, putting it down, and then guilt-reading twenty more pages every few weeks like we’re in a toxic relationship together.
Really though, the only thing I cared about accomplishing today was finding somewhere outside to work out.
I have developed a completely unscientific belief that cancer probably struggles to survive inside a body that is actively trying to become unbearable to live in. Is there medical evidence supporting this theory? Absolutely not. Am I still treating sunlight, exercise, water, and vegetables like they’re magical anti-cancer cheat codes? Yes. Very much yes.
So I found a gym, worked out outside in the Houston heat, and according to my Whoop band, absolutely beat the hell out of myself physically for a while. Which honestly felt good. There’s something comforting about physical exhaustion right now because at least it’s understandable. Your muscles hurt because you used them. Simple. Straightforward. Not mysterious little blood markers floating around your body like unwanted plot twists.
That alone would’ve made for an incredibly boring blog post though.
But then dinner happened.
I wanted something light and healthy, and since Houston sits reasonably close to the Gulf, seafood felt like the right move. After looking around for a bit, I ended up at Navy Blue in Rice Village after seeing it recommended on Eater. That was honestly enough research for me.
I threw on jeans and a t-shirt and headed over, which weirdly felt significant because it was the first time I’d even brought jeans to Houston since all of this started.
Last year, there never really seemed to be a reason to pack them. My trips here revolved around hospitals, recovery, exhaustion, and trying to survive the Texas heat without feeling completely miserable. Gym shorts, joggers, t-shirts — that was basically the entire wardrobe. Jeans are what you wear when you’re planning to actually go somewhere. When you want to feel somewhat normal. When you think there’s a version of the night that might involve more than just getting through it.
For most of last year, normal never really felt like it was on the table.
So standing there in a pair of jeans on my way to dinner somehow felt like progress, even if it was the smallest and dumbest version of it imaginable.
I grabbed a seat at the bar near the windows so I could keep reading while I ate. I ordered the swordfish, which ended up being fantastic, but the real problem was the cheddar biscuits they brought out. They were basically elevated Red Lobster biscuits, which meant I immediately entered into negotiations with myself about how many counted as “reasonable.” I’m trying to eat mostly Paleo these days, so I stopped at two, even though deep in my soul I wanted approximately thirty-nine.
At some point while I was reading, a guy sat down nearby and started talking bourbon with the bartender. The restaurant had an impressive bourbon selection, and he was asking all the right questions, which naturally activated the part of my brain that cannot mind its own business.
So I joined in.
We started talking bourbon collections, unopened bottles, allocated releases, all the usual nonsense that men who spend too much money on brown liquid enjoy discussing. I mentioned that my collection had unfortunately crossed the line from “selection” into “problem,” which got a laugh and led to the obvious follow-up questions.
Eventually I mentioned that my surgeon had told me I needed to give up bourbon for a while.
That’s when he told me he was a colorectal surgeon.
Of course he was.
Not just a doctor. Not just a surgeon. Specifically a colorectal surgeon from another hospital system in Sugar Land. The exact kind of doctor who immediately understands the strange little world I’ve been living in lately.
The conversation shifted after that.
He asked about my surgery. The bag. The reversal. Recovery. He seemed genuinely surprised I was doing as well as I was physically, which I’m not gonna lie, felt pretty great to hear considering there was a period of time where I felt i looked rough.
Then he asked why I was back in Houston so soon.
So I told him.
The Signatera test. The lingering numbers. The fear that maybe this thing isn’t actually done with me yet.
He stopped for a second and thought about it carefully before answering. Then he said something that honestly landed harder than anything I’ve heard in weeks.
He told me those numbers were still encouraging.
That if one of his patients had results like mine after everything I’d been through, he’d feel really good about where things stood.
Not perfect. Not guaranteed. But genuinely good.
And for the first time in a little while, I felt some of the panic loosen its grip for a second.
Before he left to rejoin his wife and friends, he reached out his hand and asked my name.
I told him.
Then he introduced himself.
Micah Johnson.
My younger brother’s exact name.
Now listen, I know how that sounds. I fully understand coincidence exists. But at a certain point in life, you either start believing moments can mean something or you don’t. And sitting there in a seafood restaurant in Houston, talking to a colorectal surgeon named Micah Johnson about bourbon and cancer on the exact day my brain needed reassurance the most…it just felt like too much precision to be random.
Maybe that was God.
Maybe it wasn’t.
But it felt like someone reaching down into a pretty difficult stretch of life and reminding me that I’m probably not walking through it alone.
And honestly, I think that’s enough for today.